Bill said:

> small flying insects crawling/flying on the outside of the hive.
> They remind me of "midges"... Maybe they're fruit flies.

I saw exactly the same thing on a honey super myself once in fall.
The super had been stupidly stacked with supers of foundation that
had not been fully drawn out by the bees, and were slated for storage
until next year.  A lack of cross-checking of super stencil numbers
between harvest lists and extraction lists meant that it was ignored.

The super sat for over a week, neglected and unprotected in rather warm
weather.  It was supposed to be "undrawn plastic foundation in those supers,
so no effort was made to seal them off.  The error was discovered weeks after
the stack was rolled into the comb storage room because of the "fruit flies"
(or whatever they were) flying about in what was supposed to be a sealed and
sanitary room for comb storage.  They were on the top bars.  I took the super
out and made gifts of the frames to colonies that could use some extra poundage
for fall and had an "empty" comb. (I sure was not going to extract it!)

> I saw nothing unusual on any but one hive. When I opened it,
> hundreds of the flies flew out and I observed quite an unusual
> amount of condensation on the underside of inner cover.

Here's a wild guess:

1)  The hive is very weak - varroa crash/queenless/whatever.

2)  The (smaller number of) bees are not keeping the upper
    super "clean" and patrolled.

3)  The tiny flying insects are being opportunistic, and
    moved in, bred, and "took over".

My reasoning is that the bees would normally find and eliminate
this (or any) sort of interloper in a stronger hive.

         jim  (Who learned to practice double-entry
               "beekeeping bookkeeping" in the honey
               house from that incident)

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